Suspected cases in Austria not Ebola: ministry (Update)

August 19, 2014

Austria's health ministry gave the all-clear Tuesday evening after regional authorities earlier reported two suspected cases of Ebola in two men recently returned from Nigeria.

"The test results in both cases were negative," the health ministry said.

The news came hours after the governor of Upper Austria province, Josef Puehringer, said two men who returned last Wednesday from Lagos had been hospitalised on suspicion of carrying the deadly disease.

Blood samples were sent to a laboratory in Germany, which announced late Tuesday that the results were negative, Puehringer later said.

The two men had been hospitalised in the northern town of Voecklabruck after developing a fever following a work trip to Nigeria.

They were initially held in quarantine, while authorities also tried to locate anyone the pair may have been in contact with in case further action was needed, Puehringer said.

The World Health Organization said Tuesday that the global death toll for the virus had reached 1,229, most of them in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, with four cases in Nigeria.

Authorities in Nigeria on Monday announced a second case of Ebola in Africa's most populous country, an alarming setback as the total death toll from the disease in several West Africa countries shot up by more than 150 to ...

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